[OSGeo-Discuss] overall value of market for business based on OSGEO projects?

[Andrea Giacomelli]

Hi Brian, and thanks for the inspirational overview. I totally agree with
it.

But if I go back with this to my colleague (I won't meet him at the cafe
after close-of-business today because I'm travelling, but tomorrow might
well be), he will claim that this is too much of a quasi-philosophical
explanation.

A simple way of getting the number is simply checking the revenue of the
key  companies involved in the business.

The next "quantum leap" in innovation might be round the corner and
completely change our paradigms for estimating the size of a market, but
until this happens, if we are assigning a value to it, we are making a bet.

The "third level" you mention is what my colleague calls "ecosystem
services". Interestingly, their value can be estimated as well (I have
started to work a few years ago on one of these cases);

but for the time being, I will stick to "level 1", considering the thread
open for a couple of days, should any other folk wish to drop a line.

Thanks also for the "good travels" in Italy...in fact I am an Italian
citizen and a resident, but I travel quite a lot up and down "The boot", as
we call it (today towards the AC/DC gig in Imola...)

Best regards!

Andrea Giacomelli
http://www.pibinko.org



2015-07-08 21:22 GMT+02:00 Brian M Hamlin <maplabs at light42.com>:

> Hi Andrea -
>
>   like so many good questions looking for a simple answer, there is no
> simple answer..
> Let's make a "thought experiment" .. and divide economic acitivity into
> three different groups..
> Each one could be measured in currency, but I wll argue that only one of
> them makes sense..
>
>  * in the first case, the market is like a physical market . someone has
> eggs to sell, or furniture, or a service like medical service..
> a customer pays in currency, and all transactions are recorded (somehow)..
> the ecomonic value is the sum of all transactions..
>
> * the second is a market like a legal federation of many marketplaces..
> things are available from multiple sources, so prices go up and down..
> the prices change for a variety of reasons. But, what if someone "gives"
> something essential, for non-market reasons..
> the price may go down.. but what if a machine is invented that make one
> million times more of a good or service?
> does the price go down ? what if the machine makes something that was
> never available before.. is there a price ?
>
> * the third is the natural world we live in.. a unique collection of clear
> air, clean water, things to eat and places to live and
> make babies.. what is the "price" of clean water ? does it go up or down..
> what is the "price" of a rhinocerous or an elephant,
> that is a living being not in the human market at all .. what if the
> actions of the market kills or poison things that are not in the
> market, to make room for things that are in the market..
>
>   what if software can be used to understand these relationships outside
> of any market ?
>   what is the "price" of this software ..
>
> So, in the first and most simple case.. you could take the sum of economic
> activity inside the exchange of currency..
> However, on a larger scale, the second and third measures are very
> important.. I say that the OpenSource Geospatial
> software worlds are very much in all of those.. so any number you count in
> the first one will be a poor measure of the
> others..
>
>   good travels in Italy
>   Brian M Hamlin
>
> --
> Brian M Hamlin
> OSGeo California Chapter
> blog.light42.com
>
>
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